Present day electronic devices require special provisions for removing heat. Some prior art examples include adding heatsinks and other thermally conductive structures to the electronic device. It is also known to have air cooling for structures containing electronic devices.
More recently heatpipes have been employed to transfer heat from the device to a remote location where the heat is then removed by a heatsink, a fan, or any other appropriate device.
The cooling requirement, available physical space for the cooling solution, cost of the solution and the reliability requirement of the solution help determine the type of external cooling solution. Where the reliability and the cost of the cooling solution are the most important criteria for an application, a heatsink is an ideal candidate. It has been found, however, that when cooling requirements are stringent and available physical space is constrained in the height or z direction, a large thin heatsink is inadequate. Heatpipes have not found universal application because the heatpipe merely transfers the heat but does not dissipate the heat.